Growing up, I was always one of the tallest kids in my age group. When I entered primary school, I started growing even faster, and every year, I was about 10cm taller than the year before. By the time I was in Grade 5, my height reached 160cm, becoming as tall as my mother.
At my primary school, there was one very tall female teacher. She was teaching a class in Grade 6, but because I was a tall and very active child, she remembered my face and whenever we met on a corridor, she called me by my name.
One day, I was walking up a staircase by myself during a lunch break when I bumped into this teacher. She was not in a hurry, and we started chatting on the staircase.
“You’re really tall, by the way,” she said to me in the middle of our conversation. “How tall are you exactly?”
“160cm,” I answered without much excitement. I never enjoyed being the tallest in my class, and I was also tired of being asked about my height by adults all the time.
“160cm?” She repeated with a big surprise on her face. “Well, at this rate, you will soon become taller than me. That’s your plan, isn’t it?”
“I don’t have any plan,” I said, a little offended. “I’d rather be shorter, but my body keeps growing. What can I do?”
“Fair enough!” The teacher laughed. “Since it seems that we are heading in the same direction, let me have the honour of walking with Miss 160cm for some time!”
I had never been addressed by my height before, and I thought it was funny. I laughed, and we walked the corridor together until we reached its end and she turned right to get to her class and I turned left to join my Grade 5 friends.